{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,25]],"date-time":"2026-09-25T01:35:54Z","timestamp":1790300154904,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":22,"publisher":"Optica Publishing Group","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,20]],"date-time":"2025-11-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1763596800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,20]],"date-time":"2025-11-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1763596800000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/opg.optica.org\/policies\/opg-tdm-policy.json"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000865","name":"Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000865","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Fifth Generation Inc."}],"content-domain":{"domain":["opg.optica.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Optica"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,20]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Biological tissues are composed of discrete compartments of biochemical media that often exhibit subtle differences in refractive index. Light propagating through these compartments partially diffracts in a forward direction with a\n                    <jats:italic>\u03c0<\/jats:italic>\n                    \/2 phase shift. We introduce a microscopy technique to image this scattering signal in thick tissues, called back-illumination interference tomography (BIT). An incoherent source is demagnified and imaged past the focal plane of a high-numerical aperture objective lens, producing a small, semicoherent source of backscattered light. This backscattered light undergoes a phase inversion over the narrow depth of field of the microscope, providing interference contrast to weakly scattering objects at the focal plane. BIT offers a different source of contrast to conventional illumination and oblique back-illumination microscopy. Compared to these techniques, we show that BIT improves contrast to blood cells\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">in vitro<\/jats:italic>\n                    in microfluidic chambers and\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">in vivo<\/jats:italic>\n                    in a human capillary. Finally, we apply BIT to unstained, unlabeled bulk human tissue\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">ex vivo<\/jats:italic>\n                    and compare side-by-side to adjacent frozen sections stained with hematoxylin and eosin. These results demonstrate the potential of BIT to provide high-resolution, high-speed, 3D imaging of unprocessed biological tissues.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1364\/optica.567543","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,29]],"date-time":"2025-10-29T13:00:15Z","timestamp":1761742815000},"page":"1865","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Back-illumination interference tomography for imaging weak scattering in thick tissues"],"prefix":"10.1364","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2952-4417","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Gregory N.","family":"McKay","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/00za53h95","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6343-9155","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Jerome","family":"Mertz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Boston University"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9808-7383","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Nicholas J.","family":"Durr","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Johns Hopkins University (JHU)"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"285","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"optica-12-12-1865-R1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1178","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1957169","type":"journal-article","volume":"254","author":"Huang","year":"1991","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"optica-12-12-1865-R2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2874","DOI":"10.1364\/AO.43.002874","type":"journal-article","volume":"43","author":"Dubois","year":"2004","journal-title":"Appl. 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Photonics"},{"key":"optica-12-12-1865-R11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4691","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-019-12634-3","type":"journal-article","volume":"10","author":"Kandel","year":"2019","journal-title":"Nat. Commun."},{"key":"optica-12-12-1865-R12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"210","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-017-00190-7","type":"journal-article","volume":"8","author":"Nguyen","year":"2017","journal-title":"Nat. Commun."},{"key":"optica-12-12-1865-R13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1195","DOI":"10.1038\/nmeth.2219","type":"journal-article","volume":"9","author":"Ford","year":"2012","journal-title":"Nat. Methods"},{"key":"optica-12-12-1865-R14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3605","DOI":"10.1364\/BOE.10.003605","type":"journal-article","volume":"10","author":"Ledwig","year":"2019","journal-title":"Biomed. Opt. 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Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article\u2019s title, journal citation, and DOI.","name":"copyright","label":"Copyright"}]}}